


Wax Seal

by NebulousMistress



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - Fandom, Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cecil Has A Third Eye, Cecil is Inhuman, Cecil's Fashion Sense, Horror, M/M, Tattooed Cecil, Typical Night Vale Weirdness, post #74 Civic Changes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-23 03:21:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4861097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NebulousMistress/pseuds/NebulousMistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Strange changes are happening around Night Vale. Protests, dogs, envelopes, what's next? Elder gods? Oh Father I hope not...</p><p>Related to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4726910">Wax Eye</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen.

Change was coming in Night Vale. Hideous changes as the dog park was opened. At least, it was opened to properly licensed dogs. Who never came back.

Nobody mentioned that the hooded figures who lurked the town were now followed by smaller hooded figures who bounded on four legs and seemed to make a lot of panting and sniffing noises.

Still, change was coming.

Among the protests, among the work and the day to day stresses, among the new hooded figures running up to citizens and nosing their crotches while seeking head pats, the little things tended to be overlooked.

Like the envelopes.

 

* * *

 

Carlos trudged home from the lab. It hadn't been a difficult day, merely long. A vial decided to explode and release some sort of mist that coalesced into the first thing it touched. Which of course happened to be a spider. The mist-spider had spent the whole day hidden in a crack in the ceiling, oblivious and immune to all the best brooms that could be shoved at it. In the end it took a complex rigging of scrap and stuff to stick a can of air up into the ceiling to blow the mist-spider down to where it could be captured.

He unlocked the apartment door... and slipped.

Ow.

Carlos looked up at the sky, at the last few rays of sunlight giving way to void. Or perhaps the void was consuming the sunlight, reaching its long voidy fingers to devour the sun.

He sat up and looked around for what he'd slipped on.

Oh hey, an envelope. He tried to pick it up but he couldn't seem to get any kind of grip on it. Weird. It moved along the floor well enough, he just couldn't pick it up.

Fine. Another sciency thing that wasn't going to cooperate with him today. He settled for simply looking at it. It was the same color as the void, a black so dark it appeared to have colors within it, colors he might be able to see if only he came closer and stared, stared forever. A glyph shone faintly through the blackness, almost oppressed by it. Like the stars that tried to shine past the void of the sky. This glyph shone like those stars.

Carlos squinted at the glyph. He couldn't read it. He wasn't even sure if it was a glyph or just a drawing of something or even a meaningless scribble.

He could almost see the colors...

“Carlos? Are you all right?”

He dragged his eyes away from the colors of the void to see the sky was black and empty, the moon hung on the far side of the sky, and Cecil was standing on the steps looking worried and bemused. “Wha?”

“Carlos? What's that? Oh.” Cecil nodded in understanding. “Sorry about that, love. I got a bunch more at the station today. My intern lost five hours staring at one of them before I got to it.”

Carlos realized he was sitting on the floor of their entryway, door wide open. Anyone could have walked past and seen him staring at the floor like it held all the secrets of science. His back ached and his butt had gone numb. His stomach rumbled and he was exhausted. “How long was I...” He shook his head. No, he didn't want to know. It was long enough, far longer than that, that's all he needed to know. “What is it?”

Cecil held down a hand to help him up. “It's a letter.”

Carlos grasped his hand and pulled, climbing to his feet. Oh how he ached... “A letter? But I tried opening it and...”

“And you couldn't?”

Carlos shook his head.

Cecil laid a hand on the void envelope and slid it along the floor. Floor turned to end table turned to tabletop turned to wall and still the envelope slid along the surface, never once bending or lifting off. Cecil then placed both hands on the envelope and started pulling outward, stretching it like a pizza crust. Slowly the envelope grew bigger, the void more colorful, the glyph clearer. Finally he stepped back.

A glance at Carlos and he put his hand over the scientist's eyes. “Thanks,” Carlos said. He'd been staring again, the world starting to fall away... “What is it?”

“As I said, it's a letter,” Cecil said. “The letter 'nnnn-gaiiii'. It's just hard to tell because the envelope is two dimensional and therefore it's hard to see the proper depths.”

Carlos reached out for the wall. He could feel the texture of the wall but where the envelope started all texture stopped. To call it smooth wouldn't have been enough. It wasn't even Nothing, because Nothing implied that there was something to be missing to make it Nothing. It was like his fingers decided to Not as his hand slid right off. He reached up for the envelope again and the same problem, his hand sliding right off.

“How is this possible?” Carlos whispered, reverent.

“I dunno,” Cecil admitted. “It just is. I've always gotten these letters. Sometimes they have different letters, sometimes the envelope is a different void, but I've always gotten them. I admit it's been awhile...”

Carlos pulled away, turning to look at Cecil. Again he was struck with a sense of otherness as he looked at his boyfriend, a strange sense of wrong that curled in the pit of his stomach and clawed at the back of his throat. But Cecil was the same as he usually was. Right? I mean, he was wearing puffy elizabethan breeches with tights and a long red cape. His black and white hair seemed more like white and black today, almost like the colored strands had switched places. The wax eye on his forehead was looking at the letter and seemed worried, or maybe haggard, or maybe like it had been wearing off and was only half-drawn.

“Are you okay?” Carlos asked. “You're not in trouble, are you? I know, I mean, well, I heard that city council was mad at us for talking about the dog park and the desert otherworld in it. They're not going to do something, are they?”

Cecil shook his head. The wax eye still seemed worried, so much more so than the confidence Cecil was trying to project.

“I mean it, Cecil. If this is them saying they'll do something I want to know. I have that right since I got us into this mess, don't I?”

Cecil smiled. He placed his hands on the edges of the envelope and slid them inward, letting it stay on the wall as it shrank back down to its normal size. “I promise, Carlos,” he said. “This isn't city council at all. I'm not in trouble. You're not in trouble. I just... There's someone I have to talk to. That's all. I promise.”

Carlos was not convinced.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near.

Cecil lay in bed staring at the ceiling. He couldn't sleep. To be fair, he could tell Carlos wasn't sleeping either what with the tossing and the turning coming from his side of the bed. 

Cecil wasn't tossing and turning, he didn't have to. No, he merely stared above, not seeing the ceiling. Instead his vision focused on the rafters above the ceiling, the wasp's nest in the corner of the attic, the spiders silently dancing for their mates, the boxes of things they didn't need but couldn't part with...

A shifting brought him back to the bedroom, his eyes no longer staring through the ceiling. Instead a pair of dark brown eyes were looking at him, wary, concerned.

“Can't sleep?” Cecil asked.

Carlos shook his head. “I'm worried about this thing,” he admitted.

Cecil nodded.

“I'm worried you won't tell me what's going on.”

Cecil looked away. He turned over in bed, facing the wall. It didn't stop an arm from draping over him or the body pressed against his back.

“If you can't tell me, just say so,” Carlos whispered, lips brushing over Cecil's neck. “Just tell me and I won't press.”

Cecil opened his mouth to say it, to tell him not to ask. No words came to him, only an empty breath. His forehead itched, reminding him of the problem at hand. It wasn't that he couldn't tell Carlos, he just didn't want to. Didn't want anything to change. Not now, not after everything they'd gone through so far. Not ever.

But the words never came.

 

* * *

 

Carlos got out of the shower. The sunrise was early today, it had to be. That or he just hadn't slept.

But then, Cecil hadn't either. Carlos would have remembered that snoring.

He trudged downstairs to find Cecil holding a new two dimensional envelope against the wall. At least, he thought it was a new one, the glyph looked different. He didn't get a chance to really look at it as Cecil slid the thing behind a picture frame and moved to the kitchen to fuss with the coffee maker.

Cecil looked as tired as Carlos felt. His black hairs hung limp and listless while the white ones flew wild, perhaps even moving on their own. The wax eye on his forehead looked oddly static and flaky, like it was coming off. Weirdest though was the faint scent of... ozone? thunder? Some strange smell he couldn't quite identify. It prickled at the back of his mind, sparking some sense of cosmic dread.

“Are you all right?” Carlos asked.

Cecil grunted as he poured two mugs of coffee. He passed one to Carlos. “'m fine,” he said.

Carlos didn't press. Instead he observed. He was a scientist, after all, and sometimes observing gained one so much more than mere words.

Cecil seemed taller, somehow. No, not taller. Or shorter. He seemed More, just in general More. His fingers were definitely longer, though, and more nimble as they curled around the hot mug of coffee. He brought the mug to his face and inhaled deeply. The inhale did something, changed the room somehow, a change that reversed on the exhale.

Cecil looked at Carlos, stared with a force that Carlos hadn't realized he had. Cecil's eyes were... odd. The purple irises were darker, much darker, didn't seem purple anymore, didn't seem anything anymore. More like an emptiness, an infinite void...

Carlos stepped back, didn't even realize he did it.

Cecil sighed and put the mug down. He looked... something. Not quite hurt, not concerned, maybe resigned. He turned to face the sink, leaning over it. “You shouldn't have to worry about the envelopes anymore,” he said, voice carefully neutral. “I'll have it taken care of by tonight.”

“But what do they mean?” Carlos demanded. “You never said what they mean!”

Cecil reached up and rubbed his forehead, smearing the static wax eye. He then turned to Carlos. “No. I didn't.”

Carlos stepped back again, hitting a wall. An instinct deep within him gripped his heart, squeezed it in an icy grip. There was no reason for it, not Cecil's void-colored eyes or the white hairs that moved on their own or the crumbling wax or even the strange non-sound resonance of Cecil's voice. Yet he couldn't bring himself to look away, to move, to step forward, to blink, to speak, to nothing. All he knew was the wrongness that stood before him as science threw up its hands and ran screaming.

Cecil looked away first. He sighed, put his coffee mug in the sink, and left the kitchen.

The spell broke as Carlos slid down the wall. He took deep gasping breaths, nose wrinkling at the strange scent that lingered on the air like a predator's musk.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold.

Cecil let the door fall shut. He didn't need it to make any noise, not today. No, he'd rather just get this over with and then there wouldn't be any more envelopes or mishaps or itchy forehead or smell or Carlos unable to look at him right or anything. 

That last one hurt. That look on Carlos' face. Had it been fear? Or something worse? Something primal, lurking deep in his human brain, warning him, screaming at him to run, to grovel, to... to...

Cecil shuddered. He didn't want to think about it. And soon he wouldn't have to. Soon it would be taken care of. Not permanently, never permanently, but for now. For a year or three at least. For a year or three Carlos would never have to look at him like that again. The man could drink to forget and go on with existence the same way Cecil planned to after this was all over.

Yes, that sounded good. Drinking to forget once this annoyance was taken care of. Maybe drinking with Carlos. That might be nice. Well, poking at the poor human with his poor hangover the next day would be nice. Making him feel better afterwards, yes, that would indeed be very nice.

Cecil turned onto the main street and stopped.

Oh shit...

He should have drove.

Hooded figures stalked the streets of Night Vale. This in and of itself was not troubling. No, what troubled Cecil were the new additions to the hooded figures, the many-legged ones who sniffed and snorted and scooted their butts on the grass of the dog park.

They were dogs once.

Dogs couldn't stand him while he was like this. Not even his own past dogs, not really, they always cowered under the bed at this time. Dogs feared him, tended to take actions against him.

There were too many of these new hooded figures out today. Three was far too many. Worse, they'd caught his scent and were coming for him, barking and snarling and bounding far faster than a mere dog could.

Cecil ran.

 

 

* * *

 

Carlos was just finishing his third cup of coffee when the door slammed open then shut. Cecil leaned against it, desperately trying to keep something horrible out. Carlos looked him up and down, noticed the black was entirely gone from his hair, the skin of his arms was marred with deep purple lines, and that his eyes were almost entirely void. Even the smell was stronger. Yet somehow he still looked terrified.

Carlos looked outside to see the hooded figures collecting outside their door. Many sizes, many-legged, their hoods barely concealing slavering maws filled with teeth and deep-set glowing red eyes. Four sat on the doorstep, tails wagging, waiting patiently. As he watched more came up to join their fellows.

Carlos didn't say a word. He merely turned to Cecil with the most deadpanned look of blank confusion he could muster.

“I'm going to do this the old fashioned way,” Cecil muttered before making for the bedroom.

Carlos followed, still giving him varying questioning looks. He made the bedroom just in time to watch Cecil kick off his shoes and climb into bed. He pulled the covers over himself in a giant nesting pile and pretended to snore.

Carlos stood in the doorway, continuing to stare. There was plenty of weirdness in this town but as soon as the hooded figures got involved things changed. Even if those hooded figures were once dogs.

“Go 'way, I'm sleeping,” Cecil said, muffled by the blankets and pillows.

Carlos stayed put and waited.

Cecil growled and threw the covers back. His white hair lay askew over the pillows, his wax eye cracked and colorless. The lines on his arms formed patterns, images that moved of their own volition.

“There are hooded dogs on the doorstep,” Carlos said. “Lots of them. More keep showing up.”

Cecil groaned and stuffed a pillow in his face.

“I thought you liked dogs. What's up? Surely it's not just that they're hooded figures now.”

Cecil mumbled something into the pillow. It didn't sound like words. 

The bed dipped as Carlos sat on it. He laid a hand on Cecil's wrist. “You don't have to do this alone, you know,” he said. “I'm here for you. Just tell me what you need.”

Cecil sat up. He searched Carlos' face for a trace of that previous terror. It was still there but tamped down, hidden beneath stubbornness. Perfectly imperfect Carlos, even now he was trying his best for him. Cecil closed his eyes and leaned against the scientist. He needed this, needed to not be feared. Needed to scratch the itch and remember exactly why things had to be this way. Needed to be beyond this problem, to not have to deal with the drawbacks of this power, this reality that was Cecil Palmer.

He needed several things. But most of all...

“I need to get to the library.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dogs abhorred the boy and he was always obliged to take various defensive measures against their barking menace.

In the end, they had a plan. Cecil would change clothes and Carlos would wear Cecil's previous clothes to attract the hooded hounds. While the hounds were distracted Cecil would run to his car and escape.

That was the plan anyway.

Carlos sighed for the third time after putting on the tunic, color-changing to fit his mood, that for some reason decided to reach down to his knees. Surely it hadn't been this long on Cecil. The shoes were somehow worse, a pair of bright neon blue dance slippers that forced him to take tiny graceful steps. Even the shorts were wrong, tiny shorts that looked good on Cecil but on one else. Ugh, he looked like he wasn't wearing any sort of pants at all.

The shirt turned dull brick red before fading to brown resignation. Fine, let's get this over with.

Carlos opened the door.

Oh shit...

About a dozen hooded hounds sat, laid, lurked, and waited on the front step, on the sandy native garden, in the road, one even laid on the hood of Cecil's car. One by one every hood turned to him.

Carlos started to run.

He didn't make it far.

A hooded hound the size of a pony impacted with his back, sending him flying to the ground. Carlos turned over to try to defend himself from slavering jaws, maiming claws, whatever other horrible things those hooded cloaks hid from the outside world...

Sniff.

The hound stuck its snout in Carlos' belly and sniffed deeply. It wormed its head underneath the hem of the comically oversized shirt and kept sniffing.

Its tail began to wag.

And then the rest of them came. 

 

* * *

 

Cecil was just about to make his break for it when the screaming started. His blood ran cold.

Oh Carlos, his beloved Carlos. Torn to shreds by the horrible hooded hounds that stalked these unsafe streets of Night Vale. Torn apart for helping him, for daring to try to keep him safe. Carlos never even got to know why the hounds hated him, never knew why...

There was a knock on the door.

It didn't matter anymore. His beloved Carlos was dead or worse. He would take out as many of these hounds as he could, take them all down for what they dared do to his boyfriend...

The knock repeated.

Cecil grabbed a meat cleaver from the kitchen and readied to take his revenge. He pulled the door open.

“Carlos!” The meat cleaver dropped as Cecil wrapped his arms around his beloved.

Carlos stood there looking like he'd been rolled on by a bear. And perhaps he kind of was. He was dirty, covered in dust and sweat and slobber. His perfect hair stood wild with sand and twigs sticking out of it. The shirt was gone, lost to the hounds as the largest one rolled on it, eight doggy legs waving in the air. Several hounds were fighting over one shoe, the tug-o-war turning epic. All Carlos had left was one shoe, laces missing, and the tiniest pair of booty shorts he had ever deigned to wear. Even those shorts were less than certain as a hooded hound grabbed the hem and playfully growled as it pulled.

“It didn't work,” Carlos said, deadpanned.

The shorts ripped off.

“I can see that,” Cecil allowed. And then the hounds noticed him. His eyes went wide and he slammed the door.

Carlos glowered at the door, surrounded by a press of hounds. Wagging tails slapped at his legs. An idle tongue laved his knee. A tiny hound laid on his one remaining shoe.

From behind him he could hear the wolf whistle. Only then did he realize that all he wore was that shoe.

“CECIL!” he shouted. “Let me in!”

“There are dogs...” came the muffled reply.

Carlos shrieked. “There are dogs licking me!” More tongues had indeed found their way to his skin. And not just his knees...

“Well they're dogs...”  


“There are dogs LICKING me in places I don't want to be licked by dogs! There are NOSES where they don't belong!”

Stunned silence gave way to a muffled snort.

“Cecil, if you don't open this door and let me in, so help me I will open it myself and bring all the dogs in with me!”

A scrambling away from the other side of the door led Carlos to sighed. He then jumped and shrieked as a cold wet nose prodded him in places few noses should ever go. “Ugh...” He opened the door.

A stampede of hounds heralded Carlos' entrance. The pack of hooded figures sniffed over every surface before making their way en masse to the bedroom. Carlos followed them.

The hounds encircled the bed, though one or two had jumped on it and were rolling in the sheets. Hounds sat and wagged their tails, laid on the floor near the bed, even stuck their heads under and whined plaintively. The occasional playful yip sounded from the room, almost drowned out by the swishing of tails and the snuffing on the bed.

Carlos stood in the doorway, hands on his hips and legs spread. He was very aware that he only wore half of one shoe. “I warned you, Cecil,” he said. “I had hooded dogs licking my junk. In public. The secret police were laughing at me.”

A tentative hand reached out from underneath the bed. Long fingered, pale, marred by dark purple lines that appeared to form a series of patterns like tattoos. It was beset upon by the hounds, licking and nuzzling for pets. A smaller hound gnawed playfully on a finger. The hand pulled back as Cecil slowly began to extract himself from under the bed.

Tongues licked his face, eager tails swished in his eyes, noses sniffed his hair. Confusion reigned in Cecil's void eyes.

“What... were you expecting?” Carlos asked.

“Dogs... always hate me like this,” Cecil admitted. “They try to kill me as something unnatural. Unwholesome. They bark like mad, bite, charge, hide, anything but--” He sputtered as a hound licked his mouth while he was talking. “Bleh. Dog breath.”

Carlos would have laughed but the situation was too incongruous.

Cecil pulled himself out from under the bed and sat on the floor. Hounds piled on him, wanting to be close to him. A smaller one landed in his lap and rolled over for belly rubs, its nine legs waving in the air in strange patterns that didn't seem possible. Cecil reached down to rub its belly as a thought came to him.

“These aren't dogs anymore...” he whispered.

“What?”

“These aren't dogs anymore,” Cecil exclaimed. “They're hooded figures! They're not gonna hate me like dogs are, they don't remember that they should. Carlos, I'm safe!”

“That's great!” Carlos still wasn't sure why dogs would be such a problem but then this was Night Vale. Perhaps the dogs were sensing the same... oddness... that Carlos had been terrified of. He shook off the memory. There was no reason to be afraid, nothing more weird than usual about the smell or the eyes or even the two dimensional envelopes. “I'm going to take a shower.”

“Wait! What if they turn back into dogs and kill me? Don't leave me here alone!”

Carlos sighed. He sank to the floor across from Cecil. A hound laid on him, demanding belly rubs. Carlos looked at the hound but got a headache as too many legs moved in and out of reality in ways his eyes couldn't fathom. He wasn't even sure where the hound's belly was for rubbing. “Let me get dressed then,” he said. “And we'll get you to the library.”

Cecil nodded.

 

* * *

 

The walk to the library felt almost anticlimactic. The hooded hounds followed as a great bounding honor guard, leaping and barking and lolling as though it were all a great game, a happy little walk culminating in a legendary session of play. The sheriff's secret police all watched, so much more suspicious than normal. Doors slammed and windows shuttered as they passed as though a great wave of terror followed behind them.

Carlos watched it all, stamping down his own sense of wrongness with the entire situation. The smell that seemed to emanate from Cecil reminded him of ozone or burnt gunpowder or even the reports of Apollo astronauts concerning the scent of the moon itself. The lines on his arms were coalescing into swirls of eyes and mouths, tendrils and spirals, tentacles and patterns that made his head hurt if he looked at them too long. His hair was snow white now, the strands thick like tendrils that moved on their own in an eerie approximation of what hair might look like to one who'd never seen it. But the worst were the eyes. Cecil's eyes were darker than black, great pits of void that glowed with an otherworldly unnamed color.

Carlos had to get him to the library. If there was some way to reverse this or maybe stop it from getting worse then Carlos would do anything. This had to be horrible, had to be a terrible ordeal for Cecil to go through, he had to be terrified, right?

Then why wasn't he?

What was going on?

The hooded hounds stopped and howled long and disappointed at the base of the library steps. Cecil didn't pause, walking up those steps with purpose.

Carlos followed him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of Their semblance no man can know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind.

Carlos stared wide-eyed as they passed through the library. It seemed an odd mockery of the libraries he'd frequented at his own university. It was cleaner, sure, more ordered. This library even had the odd nests of comfy chairs and paperbacks, though he knew beyond shadow of a doubt that these nests had not contained anything so benign as tired undergrad students. But the worst was the emptiness.

He could find no one else in this library. The information desk was unmanned, the stacks were silent, the chairs were empty, the conference rooms stood unlocked, dark, ajar. There weren't even any of the terrible librarians he'd heard of but had never seen. Where was everybody?

“Cecil?” Carlos asked.

“Shhhh,” Cecil hushed. “We're almost there.”

Carlos heard a rustle behind them. Something moved out of the corner of his eye. But they were still alone.

The maze of shelves and stacks twisted and wound, somehow sloping down into the basement. If the library even had a basement. Maybe it just sloped down, far downward into the bowels of the earth.

Carlos shook his head. Such unscientific thoughts were unbecoming of someone of his status. Of course the maze didn't go that deep. It couldn't. It would get too hot for the books if it did.

Something soft and fuzzy brushed past him.

“Cecil...”

“They know we're here,” Cecil said. “Don't let them know you sense them.”

That was easier said than done as Carlos began to feel eyes on him, staring at him from behind. A strange musty breath overpowered the stench of ozone and Outside for a moment, puffing on the back of his neck. The rustle of heavy fabric followed them down, down past the deepest parts of where a basement should be. Down through the stacks where the books ceased to be in recognizable English, fading to Latin, ancient Germanics, Modified Sumerian, even older languages no longer recognized by living beings, books giving way to parchments and tablets, paper to skin and stone and metals...

A faint hissing followed them down, down into Special Collections.

 

* * *

 

Cecil gave Carlos' hand a squeeze before letting go. Here in Special Collections, their destination, a stone circle of menhirs stood around an ancient altar of crumbling granite. He bade Carlos stay out of the circle before entering. The lines on his limbs writhed with glee and anticipation. He closed his eyes and sighed, inhaling the horrible stench of Outside, the same scent he could never cleanse from his own tainted soul.

Not that he wanted to. He'd seen how these mortals lived, their short pointless lives spent squabbling in the mud and the sand, always grasping at the dirt to stuff their own eyes and ears shut to save them from the horrible truths.

But then, he realized, sparing a glance at Carlos, not all mortals were content with lies. Some demanded those truths, risking their lives and minds and souls for it. Such scientists were more than mortal, if not in lifespan then in mind.

Perhaps... yes... Perhaps he would give that scientist a gift. A gift of truth, a glimpse of the reality long since hidden by the ignorance of limited senses and humanity's insistence on their own importance.

“This place is ancient, my dear Carlos,” Cecil purred. “Older than people, older than the librarians, older still than Night Vale. This place, this is what makes Night Vale so interesting. Have you ever wondered why the librarians are so... horrible? Why a town such as this has a library so extravagant?”

“I had wondered,” Carlos allowed. “Especially in a town like this. Knowledge doesn't exactly seem to be something that city government approves of.”

“I know...” Cecil took a deep breath before reaching a hand to his forehead. He scraped his fingernails against it, drawing blood and rending the last of the wax eye from his skin.

Something changed, something imperceptible. Carlos wasn't sure what it was, only that it was a feeling, a sensation of everything and nothing changing all at once.

In the darkness around them came low hissing voices. “the ssseal... the ssseal... it'sss broken... the Voissse isss free...”

“Free...” Cecil whispered.

“Cecil?”

“There is knowledge here, power, the threads of great workings have been sewn, wrought, weaved, and sculpted. This is a sacred place, the only one here in Night Vale. The only one untouched by meddling mortal hands. That's what the librarians do, they keep it safe from unclean hands, keep the barrier between those who understand... and those who would be destroyed by trying...”

Carlos' blood ran cold. Something was very wrong here, a sense that turned his innards to ice. His mind reeled, not sure where he was anymore, here in Night Vale or on some lightless black planet or even lost in the Void itself. Only the undulating hissing behind him kept him from falling to his knees.

“The librarians attempted to keep that knowledge for themselves, to ration it out carefully to those they deemed worthy. But of course it doesn't work that way. Knowledge is not meant to be kept locked away. I... am not meant to be kept locked away...”

Cecil turned void eyes on Carlos, a single line of red-black blood dripping from the claw marks on his forehead.

“You're a librarian?” Carlos whispered.

Soft laughter echoed in Cecil's honeyed voice. “No, no my dear Carlos. Good guess though. I am no librarian. I'm too uncontrolled, uncontrollable. I am too human.”

“Then what...”

“My mother was human. A willing sacrifice, long ago. A family I no longer care to remember, an insane mother, a pitiful brother who fancied himself my equal. A family not mine anymore. No, now I choose my family, same as I choose... everything...”

“no... no choissse... no choissse... no freedomsss...”

Cecil ignored the hissing of the unseen librarians. “My father... was so much more. And just as he keeps the gate, keeps the key, I too keep the gate and the key of Night Vale. They know what I choose to tell them, nothing more. They act as I wish, as I decide, as I determine. It was I who uplifted Dana, who encouraged Tamika and Janice, who brought you home, Carlos. Night Vale is my town to do as I wish.”

“hssssssss... nooo... you cannot... you are merely... the Voissse... the knowledge isss not yoursss to give...”

Cecil turned on the librarians then. “It is **MINE!** ”

“ _hsssssssss..._ ”

Carlos dropped to the dirt floor, his legs forgetting how to stand as a great surge of cloaks and foulness and  _ things _ descended on the altarstone and on the figure who howled his dominion over it. He closed his eyes against the horrible sounds, the shrieking and the claws, the screaming and the hissing. He couldn't watch, couldn't watch what the librarians were doing to Cecil, didn't even want to consider what Cecil was doing to the librarians.

And then it was over. At least it sounded over. Carlos opened one eye.

It wasn't over. It had just begun.

 

* * *

 

Limbs, legs, tendrils, tentacles, flagella, worse wrapped around Cecil as he struggled. Despite everything, despite the broken seal, he was still bound to a puny human-like form. His tattoos writhed angrily, mouths snapping and eyes glowering, but they could do nothing against the onslaught of far too many limbs holding him down upon the very stone altar that had begun the whole thing: Night Vale, himself, the library and its denizens, the town and it horrors and pleasures, life and death and more...

One figure strode forward, concealed by a deep purple-black hood. At least, it seemed to stride, though maybe that was as much an illusion as the long-taloned hands that extended from the sleeves of its hooded robes. Those hands held nothing more than a single lit candle, a fat taper the same purple color as its robes, the same as the few wax fragments that still clung to Cecil's bleeding forehead.

He flinched and howled as that long-taloned hand reached out and carelessly brushed the wax away. A gray speckled thumb pressed on his forehead, smoothing away the blood and the scratches, smoothing the skin. Then it patted him in an almost caring manner before holding the candle above him and pouring the wax down.

Cecil screamed at the sear of the wax, the mind-flensing agony that arched along his skin, buried itself in his bones, turned his insides to an icy fire. His captors held tighter, tried to stop his thrashing. That hated gray hand brushed at his cheek in a parody of comfort before slamming the palm of its hand onto the molten wax.

And then... silence.

 

* * *

 

Carlos woke up screaming.

The night was dark and cool, the light from a secret police flashlight in his window fleeting. Cecil rolled over next to him, mumbling in his sleep.

Three days had passed. Three days since the librarians retreated after doing strange and horrible things to Cecil that Cecil didn't seem to remember. Heck, the radio host didn't even remember going into or leaving the library! He remembered the hooded hounds, remembered how they'd liked him but didn't understand why they didn't anymore, chalked it up to the fickle nature of all hooded figures. He didn't remember his own tattoos or an altarstone in a circle of standing stones in the bowels of the library.

Carlos curled up in bed next to his strange and not-strange boyfriend. He was different now, different and all so familiar. The void eyes were gone, back to their normal crystalline purple. His hair was back to normal, black strands mingled with white, though there seemed to be more white now than before. The tattoos, the smell, even that odd infrabass timbre to his voice, it was all gone. In its place, on his forehead, a single wax eye that looked like it was drawn on but somehow changed whenever no one was looking.

Sealed away, he figured. It was all sealed away. But what was it that needed to be so sealed? Could something be so horrible that it needed to be sealed with wax and forgotten about within the mind of a man?

Carlos remembered the limbs of those librarians, the scent of Outside, the horrible reality that Cecil hinted at...

Yes, some things should be sealed away, kept from the general populace. But not forever. Never forever.

Knowledge should not be contained and forgotten. Too many times great things of science had been forgotten, burned, lost, destroyed, worse. Best to keep it safe from those too dense to appreciate. Best to keep it for those who could understand, understand and survive, thrive, appreciate.

Like Carlos. After all, a scientist is always fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate.


End file.
